Homemade Coffee Creamer

I used to love flavored coffee creamers. Irish Creme, Amaretto, French Vanilla, or the specialty flavors that came into stores around the holidays: Pumpkin Spice, Peppermint mocha, Gingerbread.

But have you ever read the list of ingredients in flavored coffee creamers? So gross. So many chemicals. And most of them are completely non-dairy (as in, no actual CREAM in coffee CREAMer). I understand avoiding dairy for health or dietary reasons (lactose-intolerants and vegans), but I'm sure most would still agree that partially hydrogenated oils, sodium caseinate, dipotassium phosphate, and sodium aluminosilicate don't exactly sound appetizing just for a little splash of sweetness in the morning.

Faced with a sugar-free version in my fridge the other day, I wondered if I could make coffee creamer myself. While I'm a big fan of plain old Half and Half (though not nonfat Half and Half: it doesn't make sense to me that something made with cream and whole milk should be physically capable of existing in a nonfat formulation), I sometimes want something sweeter, too.

Note: these won't keep until doomsday like the store bought varieties (use within 10 days), but if you're like me, coffee creamer doesn't last all that long anyway.

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Creamer
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 TBS maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract

Whisk together first four ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from heat (do not bring to a boil). Stir in the extracts.

Pumpkin Spice Coffee Creamer
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
3 TBS pureed pumpkin
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
4 TBS maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whisk first five ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from heat and stir in extract.


I can say it now: these are friggin' dangerously delicious. I may never buy flavored creamer again...

In a Sentimental Mood

Frances Drake, Via

Valentine's was on a Tuesday this year (boo). So John and I kept it simple...with some surprises!

Here's what my day consisted of:

A pretty dress...

Some spunky coral-colored nails...

Not as pink as it looks in this picture...

 Strawberry-scented lipbalm and a subtle, pretty lipcolor (the same color I wore for my wedding!)

Love this scent so much!

M.A.C. Viva Gaga #2 

M.A.C. Cremesheen Lipglass
in Boy Bait (stupid name, I know)

White bean burgers with rosemary and sun-dried tomatoes (with a whole lot more tomatoes than the recipe calls for...

Vegan chocolate chip cookie dough, eaten with graham crackers...

My favorite guy of all time...

A properly romantic movie...(Stardust)

Surrounded by vintage valentines...

And possibly a Valentine styled after a vintage telegram...

Here's how it turned out!

I also gave John a bunch of coupons for future dates...
fun with typography!

That morning, when I went to retrieve my violin for orchestra rehearsal,
I found a bud vase in my locker next to my instrument! 

So pretty...

And it smells gorgeous, too!

I hope you had a fantastic Valentine's, as well!

Grocery Shopping

I have a system. It's the reason we're able to make such wonderful food, even during the busiest weeks. I thought people might be interested to see the more practical side of making fun dinners.

This is generally my Sunday ritual. It can take as little as 20 minutes to plan everything, and we get great meals all week long!!!

Step 1: Pick recipes for the whole week

This is the part that you can either zip through or spend an hour pouring over recipes. My top three sources of inspiration online are Gojee, Epicurious, and blogs such as A Cozy Kitchen.

Gojee is appealing because it has gigantic pictures of delicious food at every turn. It's gorgeous and it runs on links to other food blogs, so you get to explore food blogs you would never have found otherwise. It's no good if you think to yourself "I really want to make stroganoff." You search Gojee by ingredient, not by dish, so it can be hard if you really want a specific dish. If you're in the mood for something made from egg noodles or roasted red peppers, however, type it in and you can scroll through tons of beautifully photographed, delicious ideas.

Epicurious is brilliant because they archive all my favorite food magazines (Gourmet, Bon Appetit). Their whole site is easy to use (here's where I go when I decide I want to search for that stroganoff recipe) and you can organize your favorites into folders for ease of use. When you amass 300 recipes or so like I have, it's a lifesaver to toss them all in folders where I can just immediately pull up the soups and find the one I was thinking of.

My folders.

A Cozy Kitchen is brilliant. First timers should hit up the recipe index for all the archived genius.

So obviously I can spend a lazy Sunday flipping through recipes and dreaming, but eventually I do coalesce all of it into a plan for the week.

Step 2: Decide what you're making when

I like to edit my lists on a Google doc. You'll see why soon.

This is where I can look at the week and decide where I have time to spend 45 minutes on dinner and what nights I should just make grilled cheese because I have a paper due. I also make sure to plan for leftovers (big things like soups and lasagnes generally have leftovers, so I try not to plan too many of those types of dishes in one week or we won't have room in the fridge to store it all.

I start by just listing the recipes (below). If I get the recipes online, I copy-paste the link right below it. If it's in a book or elsewhere, I indicate that, too. Question marks indicate ideas that I'm not sure of. I always like to ask John and Priya for input, so I am pretty flexible at this stage. 

I also like to look through the recipes and see how the ingredients measure up in terms of expense and use. For example, if a risotto calls for half an onion, I try to figure out another recipe to use up the rest of that onion. Anything that is perishable or gets cut I try to use up. I also sometimes get all the ingredients pulled up and realize it's going to be too expensive to do all those dishes that week, so I pull a recipe from the list.

Then I organize things into days. Snacks, muffins, desserts, etc usually just go below.

Step 3: Ingredients

Then I add all of the ingredients, recipe by recipe. Question marks indicate that I think we may have some of it and should check before I buy more. I always get the list completely organized, check the kitchen, then go out to shop. It has saved me several times to do a quick check, and by knowing all the question marks ahead of time I can check around once instead of 8 times as I'm making the list.

The last step is super OCD and not necessary, but it also saves time.

Step 4: Organize the ingredients by the store sections

I'm not talking aisle by aisle...who has the supermarket aisles completely memorized? Ok, so my mother in law does, but she's amazing at this sort of thing. My lists pale in comparison to hers.

But I at least group things generally. All the produce together, all the dairy together, all the frozen stuff together, all the canned stuff together, any special things like fancy cheeses or bakery. It saves me headaches. I implemented this last step after getting to the opposite end of the store and realizing I needed something back in produce one too many times. I hate running all over the store. It takes longer and it's frustrating. So although this last step feels fussy, it's worth it in the long run.

Date Night #1

Last night we had an official cook-through-a-vegetarian-cookbook date night (see previous post for more on that).

We started with two recipes from Plenty: Caramelized Fennel with Goat Cheese and a Caramelized Garlic Tart. I thought the recipes would pair well. It turned out so incredible, I don't have superlatives to fully capture the deliciousness that occurred...other than to say it was far better than restaurant food (because as we discussed over candlelight last night, the restaurant would probably only give us one slice of the magnificent tart instead of the 2-3 that we indulged in at home).

And no, the tart is definitely not healthy (other than all that garlic...good for keeping the vampires away)...it's loaded with two types of goat cheese (a softer variety-we went with chevre-and a harder gouda) and a crème fraiche custard. But if I'm going to eat something high in fat, I'd rather have it be something this flavorful and truly satisfying, made to celebrate a special night. When was the last time you said that about McDonald's?

Browning the fennel pieces in butter and olive oil before caramelizing.

Cooking in my favorite apron.

I'm no food photographer, but that's the fennel before the goat cheese
and garnishes.

Waiting for the tart to come out of the oven, I snapped a few photos of us.
You can tell I'm shorter than John because I always miss the top of his
head in photos.

The timer went off! Hooray for garlic tart!

Excitement abounds!

The finished dish, topped with dill and lemon zest.

The gorgeous tart by candlelight.

Improvised dessert: we had leftover pie crust from the tart so we decided
to make mini peach pies in a muffin pan with peach preserves, topped
with a little egg wash and vanilla sugar to facilitate golden-browning.
We served them a la mode with vanilla bean ice cream.

Delicious!

We ended the night as awesomely as we started it: watching Back to the Future III together, content and full of good food.

Such a good movie decision.